I am recycling the good parts from a previous thread of mine called "Aims of Education". In it, @Bitter Crank outlined the following pertinent points:

First, aid the individual in discovering what his native traits are -- the who and what I am.

Second, to apprehend the nature of 'the world' in its physical and social manifestations.

Third, to aid the individual in finding a congruent path between his nature and social expectations.

Fourth, to discover what is for him good work, and acquire the necessary skills. — Bitter Crank

So, this pretty much nails the issue and provides a working template to work on. Therefore, the most important question of all of these is how would you go about, first; discovering what his or her native traits are? It seems that the people that are naturally gifted in any area of expertise are quite rare. Instead of focusing on giving a barrage of aptitude tests, it would be better to work with a different framework in mind. One where a trial and error approach is encouraged. One drawback to this method is that it produces inefficiency or overhead costs on the process of education. But, since we are talking about people's sum totoal of net productivity in the future, then I think the extra costs are negligible. Another issue with a trial and error approach to education under our current system is that GPA's hypernormalize and overdetermine performance, and everyone ends up either mediocre at what they do. Think of grade inflation and such.

The second point is redundant, one doesn't need to be told how to apprehend the nature of 'the world', this is done through experience and thus education should be more experiential. This is where vocational and technical schools may fill in the gap if one is not proficient in the pure studies.

The third point is tricky due to the perversion of education by the profit motive. I suppose this can be addressed through a fundamental change in how education is conducted. One solution is to broaden the scope of one's field of expertise. This can be done through encouraging or incentivizing multidisciplinary efforts between fields through government subsidies and scholarships. Another solution is relying on the individual to find happiness in their profession and not be distracted by the evil profit motive. A third solution is to encourage trial and error, through eliminating the economic costs of spending time at college, such as student debt. Finally, the last solution is to create a fallback mechanism or a checkpoint system, which discourages the hypernormalization of one's field of interest through the GPA system. Instead, people would be allowed to take most classes on a pass or fail basis. I'm not sure if this method should be applied to all classes or only the most theoretical classes. I suppose focusing on the theoretical classes would create a checkpoint when branching out from the main body of knowledge into increasing specialization. Therefore, one would be able to conduct a trial and error approach to the most specialized fields and find their way into something they are good at.

The fourth point is seemingly redundant if any of the previous points is successful. Essentially, the first point is the most pertinent to address before one arrives at any of the subsequent points. Learning "necessary skills" is the job of vocational and technical schools, so one always has that fallback option to lean on.

What are your thoughts about this?